Pacquiao Watch: Obama, Merci, and Twitter

Whatever happened to those White House photos of Rep. Manny Pacquiao presumably shaking hands with US President Barack Obama? It has been more than one month since that historic visit but people have yet to see photos of the two famous politicians.

Pacquiao’s publicists said the photos will be released by the White House in two weeks. Apparently, members of Pacquiao’s entourage who were not allowed inside the White House and were told that whatever photo taken between Manny and Obama will be supplied by Washington.

No luck?

Or was the White House simply being prudent not to get its president in a compromising pose with the Filipino boxing champion who publicly endorsed John MacCain during the 2008 US presidential election?

Or did it have something to do with the roller coaster coverage of the Filipino’s public and private lives?

Whatever it is, it surely is a badly-missed opportunity for the publicity camp of Pacquiao.

Pacquiao’s latest tweets however are terrible cases for damage control for his communications team.

Obviously, it was Manny himself who made those tweets which included one that terribly mangled the King’s language.

I don’t really mind that. Tweets are not the exclusive domain of and was not created for English professors. It is for everybody, good English or bad.

But it did not end there.

Monday evening, Rep. Pacquiao said in his twitter account @CongMP that he was following the Philippine House of Representative plenary session while in his Baguio training camp to prepare for his May 7 fight with Shane Mosley. It was an innocent tweet but it eventually led him to give up the account.

Reason? His succeeding arrogant gutter-language-like tweets triggered a barrage of nasty comments and unflattering replies from followers of the boxing champion that likely flooded his mobile phone.

Among the comments to his tweets was his noted absence from the House of Representative sessions although House Speaker Sonny Belmonte had already earlier said Pacquiao was excused from his duties.

The coup d’ grace was of course voting on the Merceditas Gutierrez impeachment case via his Twitter account.

Rightly or not, voting on a crucial issue via Twitter was not only unparliamentary. It showed contempt over the proceeding. It was clear that the voting will be on roll call. He was not in Congress at that time. Therefore, he should that have tweeted “I vote NO and I can give my explanation.” at the crucial time when voting was under way in the House of Representatives.

It was alright to express his opinion but not to register his vote on Twitter.

But then again, Manny is Manny and he sometimes (or oftentimes?) does what he wants to do. Most of the time he can get away with it, right?